Limitations, Data Sources, and Other Information:
I used APIs to access data directly from the FBI Crime Data Explorer and the US Census Bureau. All data visualized in the dashboard is directly from these two sources or is generated from calculations done with these two data sources. This dashboard was generated using Quarto in R Studio.
Some agencies reported “-1” for rates during certain months, presumably this is because most of them have no rate since they do not cover population - this was the case for all the college and university agencies, BPS, airports and other similar agencies, as well as the Catawba Nation. These agencies were removed from the rates table, however any crime counts they did report were used to calculate the county and region level rates.
If any agency failed to report on a given month, I recorded its count and rate as “0”. The overwhelming majority of SC law enforcement agencies reported data for all 12 months of 2024 according to SLED (see below).
The state and agency level counts and rates shown here are those reported by the FBI CDE. The county counts are the sum of crime occurring in agencies within the county. The regional counts are the sum of the counts for the counties within the region. County rates are calculated using US Census population estimates for each county and the crime counts calculated for each county. Regional rates sum county population estimates and crime counts and uses these variables to calculate the rate.
Some agencies overlap more than one county. I tried to locate any instances of this and in those cases assign the agency’s crime total to the county in which the majority of agency is situated.
According to SLED, 37 agencies failed to report between one and twelve months of data in 2024. See page one of this SLED report.
According to SLED there are 279 active law enforcement agencies in SC. The CDE lists ORIs for 280, the data from which are shown here.
Thanks for viewing,
Cannon Fulmer